Windypops? In 2002?!

Sue Perkins is a bundle of nervous energy as she paces the floor of her north London flat, making coffee while we talk. We're in her cosy living room and her beagle puppy, Pickles, is bouncing around, glad to have her home after she spent just over a week in the Celebrity Big Brother house. The programme ended last Friday, with former Take That star Mark Owen emerging as the winner. Over the past few days, Sue has been getting back to normal, catching up with family and friends. But what had seemed like an interesting diversion - Perkins says she went into the house because she thought her life was "becoming boring and predictable" - has turned sour. She is feeling, to be frank, rather hacked off.

"For two days, everything seemed fine," she says. "I came out of the house on Thursday night, and was glad to be back at work. Then, on Sunday, I bought the Sunday papers, and I couldn't believe the headlines ... I was being described as a 'dark force', and there was even an insinuation that I had suffered some kind of mental breakdown. I had only had a little sob because I was feeling homesick."

She admits that she and fellow housemate Melinda Messenger were never going to become friends, but is angry at the aforementioned "revelations".

"Certainly I was the antithesis of the bright, bubbly blonde Page 3 girl. I thought my inclusion might have made for diversity, but it's possible some housemates felt threatened by the fact I read English at Cambridge," she says. "I just didn't have anything in common with most of the people in the house. I never suggested Melinda was unlikeable. I simply said I couldn't confide in her.

"In short, she wanted to win, and that sparked my very gentle remark about her being a Vulcan. That woman is robotic. Who on earth says 'windypops' in 2002? What saddens me is that it has led to her insinuating that I had some kind of breakdown. I thought I was rather jolly for the first few days, and I'm sad if I came across otherwise."

In reality she is fiercely intelligent, with a sardonic, self-deprecating sense of humour. On one occasion in the house, she took a defrosted chicken that she thought had gone off into the diary room to ask for advice. "What would you do in a normal situation?" asked Big Brother. Quick as a flash she replied: "Well, in a normal situation I wouldn't have Les Dennis in my house."

For a comic who has made a living out of ridiculing celebrities, it might seem foolhardy to want to spend several days cooped up in the house in the first place. Why on earth would she want to put herself through it? "I thought it would be interesting and a challenge to live under the spotlight with people you don't know," she says. But boredom took its toll. "I've never been without a pen and paper before in my life," she says. "You don't know what boredom is until you've been in the house - how people do it for 10 weeks is beyond me."

Perkins is also fiercely protective of her personal life, and to put herself under such intensive scrutiny was a brave decision, particularly as it was another reality TV show, I'm a Celebrity - Get me Out of Here!, that had indirectly forced her to "come out" as a lesbian. Her former girlfriend, Scottish comedian Rhona Cameron, went on the show and afterwards spoke to the press about their two-year relationship. "I'm grateful she respected my wishes not to talk about us while we were still together," Sue says now. "But I accept that if you want a career in the media, a lot of that privacy has to go. Rhona had to be honest or she would have been branded a hypocrite. I was upset purely because I hadn't been brave enough to do it myself."

Sue Perkins was brought up in a comfortable lower middleclass home in Croydon, the eldest of three children. Her mother was a secretary, her father a car salesman. Although her family have known that she is gay for some time, she is only just beginning, at the age of 33, to be comfortable with her sexuality.

During Big Brother she did broach the subject, and talked briefly about her relationship with Rhona Cameron, but immediately regretted it and went into the diary room to ask the producers to "edit that bit out". They didn't, but, as Perkins admits, the fact that she had no control was really the point of the exercise.

"Rhona has always been very open and honest about who and what she is and the fact that I wasn't, contributed to us breaking up," she says.

"I went in the house because I thought it was time to get my personal life out in the open, once and for all. Sadly, exactly what I had expected after being on Big Brother has happened; in one week I've gone from being one half of Mel and Sue to being a lesbian comic."

Mel is, of course, Mel Giedroyc, whom she met while they were both at Cambridge and members of Footlights, the dramatic society. After doing the usual round of Edinburgh Fringe and writing for the likes of Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, they became overnight hits in 1997 with their Channel 4 programme Light Lunch, a zany mix of cooking, comedy and celebrity chat.

They have just finished a sellout run at the Arts Theatre in the West End (where they weaved in several spot-on jokes about Big Brother) and are planning to tour again early in the new year.

Sue plans to spend the holidays with her family, and says that of course she will be spending time with Rhona Cameron, with whom she is still close. "Rhona is on the record as saying that I am the love of her life. I have gone on record saying the same. I have great respect for the fact that she didn't capitalise on our relationship while I was in the house, because God knows the offers that were made.

"I don't believe my private life is interesting, but now surely everybody knows what my sexuality is and I don't have to mention it again. Now perhaps I can just go back to being funny."